Cyber-physical system product line engineering: comprehensive domain analysis and experience report

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are the future generation of highly connected embedded systems having applications in diverse domains including Oil and Gas. Employing Product Line Engineering (PLE) is believed to bring potential benefits with respect to reduced cost, higher productivity, higher quality, and faster time-to-market. However, relatively few industrial field studies are reported regarding the application of PLE to develop large-scale systems, and more specifically CPSs. In this paper, we report about our experiences and insights gained from investigating the application of model-based PLE at a large international organization developing subsea production systems (typical CPSs) to manage the exploitation of oil and gas production fields. We report in this paper 1) how two systematic domain analyses (on requirements engineering and product configuration/derivation) were conducted to elicit CPS PLE requirements and challenges, 2) key results of the domain analysis (commonly observed in other domains), and 3) our initial experience of developing and applying two Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) PLE solution to address some of the requirements and challenges elicited during the domain analyses.